Mind and body
Facing a fear, one small virtual step at a time.
Gentle explainer videos on exposure work, relaxation, biofeedback and how to tell whether therapy is helping.
Image: credit
Some fears are hard to practise with. You can't book a thunderstorm for Tuesday at ten, and a crowded train isn't a gentle place to start. Virtual reality lets a therapist build the situation, dial it up or down, and stop the moment it's too much.
These four videos cover exposure therapy, relaxation for pain, biofeedback-guided sessions and, the bit people often skip, measuring progress. They're written for clinicians and researchers, and they're plain enough for anyone who's curious. Nothing here is medical advice.
Explore
On this site
Virtual reality exposure therapy
How can a headset help someone face a fear safely?
VR for deep relaxation and pain management
Can a calm virtual place change how pain feels?
Biofeedback-guided VR sessions
What if the virtual world could notice how you feel?
Measuring progress in VR therapy
How do we know VR therapy is working for this client?
VR for fear of flying
Can someone practise a flight without leaving the ground?
VR practice for social anxiety
How can a virtual room full of people help someone speak up?
VR for spider and animal phobias
How close can you get to a spider when you know it's virtual?
Watch
A short introduction to virtual reality therapy
A brief welcome: what graded exposure in a headset can look like, and why measuring progress matters.
Each topic page has its own short film, with captions, the full script, chapters and sources.
From the journals
Research worth knowing about
American Laboratory and AV Magazine on HVS VR, plus open anxiety research. Each item is rewritten from the original and linked.
When American Laboratory walked the SfN VR aisle
In March 2017 Steve Ernst looked back on Society for Neuroscience exhibit floors where virtual reality tools for research were multiplying. Among four vendors he singled out, HVS Image (Oxfordshire) was described as combining decades of animal behaviour analysis with human psychophysics to build a highly immersive HVS 4D VR environment for people: full stereo 3-D with real-world physics, animal-test analogues such as the Morris water maze, open field and novel object recognition, plus virtual forests, suburbs and homes for spatial learning and anxiety work, with built-in analysis and Matlab export, and interfaces from headsets and gamepads to free walking and an omnidirectional treadmill. (Today the product line is HVS 6D VR; the article itself names HVS 4D VR.)
Read the original at American LaboratoryWhen VR first walked into the therapy clinic
In October 2017 Zoe Mutter reported that HVS Image had released HVS 4D VR, a system meant to let clinicians write their own therapeutic regimens, gamify them and even send them home for denser practice than clinic slots allow. Centres already using it included Harvard Medical School and Vanderbilt University Medical Centre. Treatments named in the piece cover stroke rehab, Alzheimer's, depression, anxiety and neuromotor work; patients move through scenes by walking, controllers or 2D treadmills, and sessions can be scored numerically or by automated reports. (Today the product line is HVS 6D VR; the article itself names HVS 4D VR.)
Read the original at AV MagazineThirty-three trials, one clear tilt toward lower anxiety scores
Zeng, Xu, Yu and Chu pooled 33 randomised trials (3,182 adolescents and adults) comparing virtual reality therapy with conventional care. Across anxiety measures, VR favoured lower symptoms (SMD -0.95, 95% CI -1.22 to -0.69). Heterogeneity was high, many trials sat in perioperative or procedural settings, and the authors say larger, cleaner studies are still needed. Open access in Frontiers in Psychiatry, PROSPERO CRD42024574772.
Frontiers in Psychiatry
Read the original at Frontiers in PsychiatryHuperzine A and a less obvious memory circuit
In mice with narrowed blood supply to the brain (bilateral carotid occlusion), huperzine A improved water maze, novel object and Y-maze scores without changing how much the animals moved. The China Pharmaceutical University team traced the effect to more acetylcholine in the dorsal striatum, acting through alpha-7 nicotinic receptors and a striatum to substantia nigra pathway. Delivering huperzine A, acetylcholine or donepezil straight into the dorsal striatum reproduced the benefit. The paper appeared in Targetome.
Targetome
Read the original at EurekAlert!